The Cal Poly Symphony’s second fall concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 4, in the Performing Arts Center, will showcase student soloists and music by American composers George Walker and Aaron Copland.
The student soloists were winners of the symphony’s Solo Competition in November: four instrumentalists, one vocalist and one composer.
The instrumentalists are liberal studies major Daisy Strombom, who will play Otar Gordeli’s “Concertino for Flute and Orchestra,” Op. 8; music major Mia Flores, who will play the first movement of Serge Koussevitzky’s “Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra,” Op. 3; business major Ayden Gregory, who will play the theme and three variations from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's “Variations on a Rococo Theme”; and computer science major Noah Chang, who will play the first movement of Maurice Ravel’s “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G Major.”
The vocalist is music major Jadyn Voss, who will sing Victor Herbert’s “Art is Calling for Me” from his operetta “The Enchantress.”
The orchestra will also perform the second and third movement from “Suite of Life” by composer and music major Isabelle Koenig.
To round out the program, the orchestra will perform works from two U.S. composers: George Walker and Aaron Copland.
Walker, the first African American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, wrote his “Lyric for Strings” in 1946 after the death of his grandmother. Originally the slow movement of a string quartet, this lament was later published for string orchestra and has remained one of his most enduring works.
Fellow Pulitzer Prize winner Copland wrote music for his ballet, “Rodeo,” in 1942 on a commission from the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The composer notably includes American folk tunes and dance music in the ballet, and in the orchestral suite derived from it. In the movement “Buckaroo Holiday,” Copland quotes, “If He’d Be a Buckaroo by His Trade” and “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.” In the movement “Hoe Down,” one finds the fiddle tune “Bonaparte’s Retreat.” Apart from the folk references, these two movements from “Rodeo” capture the rustic energy of the frontier and the American West.
The symphony is directed by music Professor David Arrivée.
